Palin Meets EC

The latest issue of Tales From the Crypt (inspired by the 1950s EC Comic of the same name) features Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin wielding a hockey stick at the Crypt’s storytelling inhabitants.

The publisher assures us that his intentions were completely non-partisan: “[A]ny White House candidate who even entertains a conversation about book banning is a natural enemy to ‘Tales from the Crypt,’ according to Jim Salicrup, editor-in-chief of Papercutz, the publisher that revived the classic title about 16 months ago. ‘This was not a partisan thing. People tend to think of everything as black and white these days — you are either for or against one of the parties 100%. But for us, this was about the history of EC Comics, the original publisher of ‘Tales from the Crypt.’ Anyone who knows that history knows that even a whiff of banning books is going to get us angry.”

EC Comics and its publisher William M. Gaines were investigated by the United States Congress in the 1950s for purportedly contributing to the delinquency of minors. Congress’s efforts to censor comics eventually led to the creation of the Comics Code and the demise of every EC title except Mad (which survived by becoming a magazine).

In fact, EC nurtured some of the finest and most influential talents who ever emerged in the comic book field – artists like Will Elder, Jack Davis, Wallace Wood, Graham Ingels, Frank Frazetta and Al Williamson, among many others. Though horrific, the comics were also groundbreaking in terms of satire and social criticism and have inspired countless adaptations in other media.